1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to rich text capability for Web based applications and Web browsers, and more specifically, to a system and method for representing and controlling rich text in memory and various text representations.
2. Background Description
Web browser based applications are becoming increasingly popular. These browser based applications necessarily handle documents of various types. However, document handling and management of documents as they change over time to include new or varying content can be very expensive and cumbersome. Flexibility in representing and handling documents, including those stored in relational databases, is limited. One specific example of a major drawback is the lack of a robust rich text capability.
Standard Web browsers do not provide full feature rich text edit functions. This includes, for example, the general lack of ability to change font face, size and color, underline, bold, italic, to create tables and lists (both ordered and unordered), to check spelling, and to add in-line images or file attachments. Further, images and file attachments typically cannot be added as links to other Uniform Resource Locators (URL), or uploaded from a local file system into Binary Large Object (BLOB) data stored on a server.
Some known web browsers have features that allow direct editing of hypertext mark-up language (html) features of a page (i.e., the “content editable” feature) which effectively creates a text area that allows limited rich text editing. These browsers, however, do not provide any method to save changes to rich text that have been made through its editing facilities. Most browsers, however, do not provide any rudimentary text or other type of editing features.
The present invention overcomes the problems set forth.